The aim of creating a top-class opera company in Canberra is under threat after the ACT government rejected the current company, National Opera, for a grant.
"That's kicked us in the guts. We have to reassess everything. It's very difficult," said the company's artistic director, Peter Coleman-Wright.
"The ACT has just given us no funding. Whatsoever."
He said the failure to fund opera, as city authorities do elsewhere, was a failure of ambition.
"Canberra is the capital, the national city. It has the best art gallery, it has the National Library, and it just seemed fitting that it should have the best opera company," Mr Coleman-Wright said.
"I just think people will really rue the day when they let the arts suffer in this way. It's soul food."
He didn't quite say the failure to help National Opera would mean the end of the company. He's despondent but "soldiering on", as he put it.
He badly wants opera lovers to go to the upcoming production of Handel's Alcina at Llewellyn Hall at the ANU on December 8 and 10.
"I'm hoping and praying that people will come and support this," he said.
He promised opera-goers would have a "great time", with some of the best soloists in Australia, a "fantastic designer", and the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.
The ACT government said it didn't comment on individual applications but "the Arts Organisation Investment Program is an open and competitive program that provides multiyear funding of up to five years".
Its statement continued: "It was a highly competitive process with the sector responding strongly to the opportunity and not all applications were able to be supported."
Mr Coleman-Wright is an internationally-recognised singer who has performed in the world's most prestigious opera houses, from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, to Covent Garden in London, to La Scala in Milan.
His aim as director of National Opera was to bring professional standards to Canberra.
"We've been told that they want an opera company, that Canberra would be a 'city of excellence'," he said.
"But not a cent. It's a shock. One of the things we wanted to do was to bring people to Canberra but it's not to be."
He has tried to do a careful balancing act. His aim was to bring top-class opera to the nation's capital but on a budget a fraction of what the Opera House in Sydney has.
While big-budget Sydney did Marriage of Figaro, for example, National Opera in Canberra put on Mozart's lesser-known opera La Clemenza di Tito. It was still beautiful music but without the recognition by the public of the bigger, more expensive opera which involved a chorus.
To keep its ambition going, National Opera applied for the grant of $100,000 under the ACT government's Emerging Arts Organisation Investment category.
In all categories, the government handed out more than $9 million a year to 29 arts organisations. The recipients were very varied: Warehouse Circus got $150,000; the Canberra Symphony Orchestra got $615,000.
Below the $100,000 mark, the punk band Glitoris received $42,000 "to support production and promotion of social justice-themed album".
The refusal to grant public money means National Opera really needs a big audience for this year's offering, Alcina.
The opera has some of Handel's best music. It has drama. As one synopsis puts it: "The opera is set on a magical island belonging to Alcina - a beautiful but dangerous enchantress who seduces every man that lands there - and transforms them into rocks or wild animals when she has grown tired of them!"
The opera was brought to prominence by the great Australian diva Joan Sutherland. Her interpretation of the title role at the Teatro la Fenice in Venice in 1960 earned her the sobriquet, "La Stupenda" - "the stupendous one".
Some of "La Stupenda's" dresses from productions will be on display at the performances at Llewellyn Hall on December 8 and 10. Tickets are available here.
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